The
title of this article is a sentence and a statement -- "Convergence of
transference sustains the God singularity." Perhaps a good
start to understanding this statement is to explore the definitions of
its words -- click here.

To
paraphrase: The acceptance of the idea of "God"
is comprised of
unconscious transference involving multifacetedintrapsychic
experiences. An example of transference follows.

Thousands
of years ago people believed the world was flat. There are various
stories told about people wanting to know
"What holds up the
world?"
The answer generally given was that the world rested on the
back of giant elephant. You can surmise how this made sense to
people because the elephant was the largest of animals and they were
strong and could carry a heavy weight. But, what they did not
realize at the time was that their question of
What holds up
...?
had been unconsciously
transferred from the
world
to the
elephant.
Sometime later the question was raised
"Well what
holds up the elephant?
The answer for this question came much easier than it did for the first
because there was already a president set an acceptable answer. The answer given was that the elephant stood
on the backs of four giant turtles. You can surmise how this made
sense to people because water was flowing off the edge of the world
which was resting on the back of the elephant and turtles were strong
and solid and didn't mind the water. So again the people's
question of What
holds up ...?
was unconsciously transferred from the elephant
to the
turtles.
Eventually the people realized this and asked
"Well what
holds up the turtles?"
Something new had to be given for an answer because it was obvious that
the usual answer was not going to work. The best answer that the intellectual
authorities could come up with was that it's turtles all the way down.
The
question of What
holds up ...?
had been postponed to ... "All the way
down to where and how far is that anyway?"
Now we know the world is a globe and is being held together by
gravity. However, perhaps this question is still alive today in
the form of "How is there gravity?" or even
"Where did God come from?"

Which
leads us to the definitive no-God analogy. The answer generally
accepted by the majority today, to the question "How
did the universe begin?"
is "God created it." What the adherents to this answer
refuse to acknowledge is that by way of transference
the question of
the beginning of the universe has become "How
did God begin?"Is God the created
son of another? Is it gods all the way down? The writer personally
feels that it is ridiculous to consider that there was even a time
before the beginning of the universe as nothing
can come from nothing. However, this logic assumes the
complete denial of the existence of the spiritual realm (a
non-material spirit world).

It
may be more prudent to answer "How
did the idea of God begin?"
Before theism there was polytheism and before gods there were just
spirits or spooks. People
are always looking for answersand
as our linguistic abilities developed so too developed ideas of why
things are the way they are and why things happen the way they
happen. It is relatively easy to bring concepts into being, but,
once brought into being they are difficult to rid of. There is a
tendency to build upon them rather than discard them. So too does
our conception of God have a history of development.

Simplicity has
far more appeal than complexity. Early gods were also related to the unexplained
such as fire and wind. Things
are simpler with only one spook instead of many. With one
god the
overwhelming
awe
of beauty and complexity of the world around us can be explained with one
answer.
This is transference of complexity into simplicity.

Another
quality that accompanies God is that of Him being a super-overseer, a
super-ruler, and generally not unlike a super-parent.
Adults
sometimes joke "I want my
mommy" as usually it is the mother that
comforts a child. And
usually
fathers are the providers of safety and are the final authority.
In the minds of some believers God may be assuming these
roles.

The
fear of death or the desire
not to die is another factor that is merged with the idea of God.
So too is the idea of life-after-death (the transference of life
to life-after-death) converged with God.

Believers
in God also have a lifelong partner and an always-present sense of
belonging. So the desire to belong and not be alone is converged
with God. You get all these things with one decision or leap of
faith when you subscribe to the God story. Unfortunately, once
a person decides that he or she believes that there must be a single God responsible
for all of creation the next behavior mode is to make that decision
right. Like the alcoholic who habitually associates with others who
drink, a person tends to align himself with a set of ideas about God. If
a person decides not to stay with the religion of
their upbringing then he or she may decide to subscribe to an alternate
religion or piece-together ideas to form a set of beliefs. As a
result of this there are many conflicting
ideas regarding God. Groups of people having conflicting ideas of
how one should live their life with God creates a very unhealthy
atmosphere for the planet.

We
have had a look at some of what
keeps God in place in this age of reason. Perhaps as this transference
neurosis or
relationship
and the distorted
misattribution surrounding God is exposed, and it no longer goes undistinguished
as such, then so will the
support for the concept of God in the real context. In
the title of this article, God is qualified as a singularity to appease
those that feel God is just an idea or a conception rather than an
established reality of nature. There may not be the
need to qualify God as over time, meanings of words change.
Sometime in the future
it may be understood that when God is made reference to, that it is the
myth of God that is being referred to-- just as the Greek gods are
considered myth today.

Current
statistics support that there may soon be a critical
mass of non-believers
that will trigger such a paradigm shift. Here is a quote from the American Religious Identification Survey,
"the greatest increase in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification; their number has more than doubled from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001;
their proportion
has grown from just eight percent of the total in 1990 to over fourteen percent in 2001."

The
question is not whether a critical mass will be reached but
rather when it will be reached. The denouncing of religion
is rampant on the Internet. Perhaps it will take only one
generation of Internet savvy people or perhaps it will take longer.

Definitions
of the words comprising the title:

convergence:

1:

the
act of converging
and especially moving toward union or uniformity;

Thank
you for the time that you have taken to read this post. I enjoy
reading comments that people may have regarding articles that I write so
I invite you to e-mail me at
feedback@realitylink.org.
(Written and posted by Darwin Bedford, January 1, 2002)

The Domain Baron's
Advocacy Column is proudly a non-CanWest publication.

I was prejudiced
against -- I lost 31 domain names
to the federal government of Canada for using them to broadcast
atheism literature, yet CanWest Global Communications Corp. is
permitted to retain "Canada.com" to
broadcast their favoritism for the Liberal government. The
government spent more of the taxpayers' money in claiming them then
they would have if they had paid my asking price.